Cold Comfort Farm (TV Movie 1995) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error In England in the early 1930's, 20 year old Flora Poste, recently orphaned and left with only 100 pounds a year, goes to stay with distant relatives on Cold Comfort Farm. Everyone on the ... See full summary » Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

a list of 21 titles created 03 Apr 2011 a list of 34 titles created 07 Aug 2011 a list of 37 titles created 13 Jul 2013 a list of 22 titles created 20 Oct 2013 a list of 32 titles created 12 Sep 2014 Title: Cold Comfort Farm (TV Movie 1995) 7.3/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 2 wins & 4 nominations. See more awards » Photos While matchmaking for friends and neighbors, a young 19th-century Englishwoman nearly misses her own chance at love. Director: Diarmuid Lawrence Two con artists' plan to steal enough for a house are twisted when a pretty girl enters the picture. Director: Stefan Schwartz Professor David Ash is invited to Edbrook to calm the fears of the elderly nanny of the Mariell family. Nanny Tess is seeing things, and Ash's book debunking such phenomenon makes him a ...

See full summary » Director: Lewis Gilbert While restoring an old painting showing a woman and two men playing chess, Julia discovers the text "Who killed the knight" underneath the paint. The owner of the painting tells her that ... See full summary » Director: Jim McBride A man marries an heiress for her money even though he is actually in love with her friend. Director: James Ivory Cold Comfort Farm (TV Mini-Series 1968) Comedy A BBC production of Stella Gibbons' satirical story. (This version was even used to help launch 1971's opening season of Masterpiece Theater on PBS.) Young Flora Poste leaves the funeral of... See full summary » Stars: Alastair Sim, Fay Compton, Sarah Badel This re-telling of Hamlet goes back to the original Danish source material. The opening scenario remains the same: Hamlet's father murdered by his brother who then weds the widowed mother. ... See full summary » Director: Gabriel Axel A delightful reflection of the era as seen on the background of the story of three priviledged girls growing up in between wars. The main character leads us kindheartedly through their ...

See full summary » Stars: Elisabeth Dermot Walsh, Javier Alcina, Rosamund Pike Two brothers - a dwarf (Rolfe) and one normal-sized (Steve). When Steve's girlfriend Carol becomes pregnant, the pair are fearful that the baby will inherit the dwarfism gene. Matters are ... See full summary » Director: Matthew Bright Two women are arrested for smuggling while vacationing in Thailand. Director: Jonathan Kaplan When an uptight young man and his fiancee move into his libertine mother's house, the resulting clash of life attitudes shakes everyone up. Director: Lisa Cholodenko Edit Storyline In England in the early 1930's, 20 year old Flora Poste, recently orphaned and left with only 100 pounds a year, goes to stay with distant relatives on Cold Comfort Farm. Everyone on the gloomy farm is completely around the twist, but Flora tries to sort everything out... Written by John Oswalt <jao@jao.com> She discovered a new branch of her family tree... the one with all the nuts.

Genres: Rated PG for brief sensuality and language | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 10 May 1996 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Em Busca da Felicidade See more » Filming Locations: $4,139,000 (USA) (19 July 1996) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia One of two TV movies in the same year where Kate Beckinsale, as her character, interfered with relationships. The other is Emma (1996). See more » Goofs The candlestick on breakfast table during the first breakfast scene changes places depending upon the shot. See more » Quotes Judith Starkadder : I'm a dead woman! Earl P. Neck : [aside] I'd take her too, but she's gloomy. Composed by E.Y.

Harburg (as Harburg) / Arthur Schwartz (as Schwartz) Published by Warner Chappell Music Ltd "I'd take the old woman as well -- but she's so gloomy!" 6 September 2004 | by dennisayers (United States) – See all my reviews This film was produced for BBC television but had a theatrical release the next year -- probably to take advantage of the popularity of all those Jane Austen movies (Emma, Persuasion, et. al.) It is not a Jane Austen story, but it is a sort of genial romance/comedy of manners (set in the early 1930's?) with a plucky, bright, but penniless heroine. The book it was based on was actually a parody of Gothic romance fiction. Even though this movie is played for laughs (and has many), it still manages to make you care for the characters. Everything works here and (editing, cinematography, performances) and you really appreciate what the director, John Schlesinger, managed to do on a probably skimpy budget. This movie was the first I ever saw of Kate Beckinsale and I thought she was fantastic in it.

I remained a fan for a long while, even though her subsequent movie performances (and choices) have been awful. She finally lost me with her recent laughable turn in Van Helsing. Nevertheless, she WAS good in Cold Comfort Farm, so if you're no fan of Beckinsale don't let that dissuade you from seeing this movie. Other standouts in the cast are Eileen Atkins, Rufus Sewell, and Ian McKellen who is screamingly funny as a fire and brimstone preacher. This film is definitely worth having on video or DVD in that it bears up very well to repeated viewings. I've seen it at least 5 times since its release, and my estimation of it rises with each viewing. 46 of 46 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Beyond Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons' other works | Books | The Guardian Reading group Beyond Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons' other works Her first novel has overshadowed all her other books, but there is much to relish in Gibbons' later catalogue Share on Messenger Close Cold Comfort Farm has been an excellent choice for this month's Reading Group.

It's provided - forgive me - fertile ground for discussion about the art of parody, transcending parody and race and class in the 1930s. Less seriously, but probably more importantly, it's also been highly entertaining and extremely funny: just the book to see us through the darkest month. I'm glad it came out of the hat – and I'm grateful to the readers who nominated it. But something has been nagging at me as I've come to know more about the book and its author. Stella Gibbons might not thank us for focusing so completely on this novel, her most famous work. Her dazzling first novel made her name, but it also became a millstone. Late in life she described it as "some unignorable old uncle, to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but is often an embarrassment and a bore." She also lamented the fact that it had so eclipsed the 20-odd other novels, not to mention various collections of short stories and poetry, that she also published. Heard of Westwood? I can't say I had either until this month.

Cold Comfort Farm overshadows most other novels from the 20th century too, so it doesn't seem entirely unfair that it should have had a similar effect on the rest of Gibbons' oeuvre. But reading about her uneasy relationship with this book – and her fondness for her others – piqued my curiosity, and so I thought I'd look at a few more things she's written. I started with the short story collection Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm – of course I did! If that was the only other thing I'd read by Gibbons I'd probably be reporting that it's quite right that Gibbons is remembered best because of the Starkadders. Looking on the bright side, the stories do provide a good snapshot of England immediately before the war (the book was first published in 1940). There are also some pointed attacks on contemporary mores that show there's more to Gibbons than making fun of Mary Webb. A story called Sisters is a bitter, angry indictment of those who judge women for loving outside of marriage. Another called To Love and to Cherish, meanwhile, is a sad account of how settling for marriage can also mean the death of ambition and a dearth of adventure.

They're certainly worth reading if you're interested in rounding out Gibbons' character – although their value as standalone works is questionable. Looking on the Aunt Ada Doom bright side, some of the stories are awful. One in particular stinks: The Murder Mark contains the flimsiest denouement to a story about killing I've encountered for a long while, as well as one that is foreshadowed with all the subtlety of these drunk elephants . Otherwise, most stories in the collection are fine, if fairly inconsequential. They aren't bad, but if they hadn't been written by the author of Cold Comfort Farm, it's unlikely anyone would seek them out. Except for one story - which is, of course, the one about Christmas at the farm. Set in the years before Flora Poste arrived, when there was still a full bevy of Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm and Aunt Ada Doom was still worried about whatever it was she saw in the woodshed, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is hilarious. There's another wonderful attack on an idiot clergyman, and some electrifying moments of Starkadder vileness. As the family await their meal, Aunt Ada Doom says: "Amos, carve the bird.

Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!" Better still, Judith "tonelessly" says to her husband: "Amos, will you pull a cracker wi' me? We were lovers … once." There's also a bevy of near-Wodehousian one-liners: "The Starkadders so seldom saw a clean and handsome object at the farmhouse (for Seth was only handsome) that they now crept round, fascinated, to examine the book with murmurs of awe." It also has a quite beautiful, gentle ending that I shan't detail further because I'd urge you to read it for yourself. I'd also urge you to go off and read some of Gibbons' other novels. Last week, I also downloaded the 1938 book Nightingale Wood, since it was the only audiobook I could get hold of and I had a morning of outdoor work ahead (moving some logs into my shed, fittingly enough). I've loved every minute. Gibbons declared she wanted Nightingale Wood to be Cinderella brought "right up to date" – but now it's fascinating as a period piece.

Gibbons is superb on middle class life in the years immediately before the second world war, on the erosions of class division and ongoing snobbery. There's something stupid and sad and lost about her quiet genteel characters trying to pretend that life can go quietly on as ominous noises from Europe grow ever louder. There's plenty that's enraging about the stifling judgements that this society heaps on women. There are a few hilarious moments and a funny comic character in the form of a hermit who lives in the woods near the suburban Essex setting, but generally there aren't so many of the big belly laughs of Cold Comfort Farm. This satire is far subtler, relying on icicle wit and sharp observation to lambast conventional morality. Gibbons also displays a tender side. There is real sadness in some of her characters, instead of deliberately heightened rural dolour – and it winds up as a love story that would please Jane Austen. In short, Nightingale Wood is very impressive. What's more, from what I can make out, it appears to be a comparatively minor entry in Gibbons' long catalogue.

A good number of her other books were recently re-released by Vintage and Rachel Cooke wrote a great article at the time, mainly recommending Westwood and Starlight. Clearly Gibbons is not – as she is often portrayed – a one-book author. It sounds as though we should be glad she also had a long productive life long after finishing Cold Comfort Farm, and lament the fact that she eventually gave up writing for publication (perhaps because she was so fed up with all her books except one being ignored). Not that I want you to think her old age was miserable, however. Let's end with a lovely image. The current (excellent) Wikipedia article on Gibbons describes how from the mid-1970s on, she started giving regular literary tea parties at her home. At these, according to Jill Neville (who wrote Gibbons' entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), "she was known to expel guests if they were shrill, dramatic, or wrote tragic novels".

Sounds like she still had plenty of Flora Poste in her … Cold Comfort Farm author left two books unpublished on her death, says daughter Published: 17 Jan 2014 Cold Comfort Farm - Review - Book Drum Cold Comfort Farm by ymgeisydd Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm is a comic parody of the 'rural' novels of the early decades of the last century. I first read it about 30 years ago, and was immediately captivated by its humour and charm, if a little thrown by its quirkiness. From the time of that first reading I have unreservedly referred to it as 'my favourite book', and have gone back to it on numerous occasions, each time finding the same pleasure and amusement. I will come back later to the issue of the book's quirkiness, but would like to begin by trying to put my finger on what made the book so appealing right at the start. Firstly (as was clear to the typists who laughed out loud whilst typing the drafts), it is an immensely funny book: sometimes the humour is sustained through complete 'scenes' (e.g. when the heroine of the novel, Flora Poste meets the sex-obsessed Mr.

Mybug in a tea-shop, or when Amos Starkadder is preaching to the 'Brethren' in Beershorn); sometimes it appears briefly in a single word, a phrase, or a sentence. Like the best stand-up comedians, Stella Gibbons has the knack of placing a crucial word or phrase in exactly the right place, as well as that indefinable ability to make funny something that would appear mundane or insignificant if written by someone else. Why do we laugh, for example, when Mrs. Beetle says "Ni smorning" rather than 'Nice morning''; when Mr. Mybug asks the Hollywood producer, Earl P. Neck, "Do you know the work of Limf?'; or when Flora Poste, plagued by questions as to who let the bull out, writes, 'I did. F. Poste' and has the confession pinned to the door? The answer to these questions is that we don't know why we laugh - we just do. Secondly, it is a novel where exactly the right ambience is created for each situation, often through the use of just one or two carefully chosen descriptions.

At one point, Flora is described as having a 'nice sense of atmosphere', and certainly the same could be said of Stella Gibbons. Thus, when we are introduced to Mrs. Smiling and Flora in the first chapter, and Flora accepts 'tea and a cinnamon wafer'; when Mrs. Beetle describes the domineering Ada Doom as a 'bit off our feed this morning'; when we hear that M. Viol has cut Elfine's hair and 'dressed it in a careless, simple, fiendishly expensive way that showed the tips of her ears'; or when Elfine reports that her grandmother does not allow any member of the family to accept invitations unless they are 'to funerals or the churching of women', the scene is instantly set, and we know exactly where we stand. Thirdly, there is throughout the novel a genuine love of the English countryside and an ability to describe it in a way which evokes a sense of wonder and pleasure at its beauty, as well as (in more recent years, at least) a sadness that so much of that beauty has now been lost and will probably never be regained.

Again, it is the ability to create the atmosphere of the countryside in all seasons and weathers which stands out. Consider, for example, the description of the evening Flora Poste leaves the farm for the final time: 'The shadows grew slowly longer. A cold, fresh smell came up out of the grass and fell from the trees. The birds began their sleep song.' Having identified those aspects of the novel which (in my case anyway) were appealing, I'd like to return to that sense I had, on first reading, of it being a very strange novel. At the time, this was strongly connected to my wish for novels to be 'realistic', and Cold Comfort Farm is full of playful fantasies (such as the leg of a cow coming off yet leaving the cow no worse for wear, or a woman jumping down a well and appearing to survive the experience unscathed) which unnerved me.

There is also the issue of the novel being set in the 'near future', and certainly on my first reading - and for many years afterwards when re-reading the novel - I found this a bewildering concept: the futuristic elements are confined only to certain aspects of life, whilst others remain firmly rooted in the world that was contemporary to the writing of the book in the 1930s. It didn't make sense to find Flora Poste considering the possibility of flying from London to Brighton one minute, and embroidering a hand-made petticoat with 'drawn threadwork' the next. However, time and an increasing familiarity with, and liking for, the transformational possibilities of fiction (now an accepted feature of postmodern writing) have tended to soften the reservations I felt then. What I perceived at that time as peculiar and unbelievable strikes me now as a highly imaginative challenge to our preconceptions about the world, and an example of a literary style which was greatly 'ahead of its time' in 1932. One last aspect of the novel worth drawing attention to is the mass of cultural and social references and allusions often wasted on the contemporary reader.

Have many people these days heard, for example, of Marie Laurencin, or Grace Aguilar, and would they be familiar with the significance of Charlotte Street or a feature in Vogue magazine known as 'Our Lives from Day to Day'? Probably not. Too much unfamiliarity with references and allusions can make a reader feel disoriented and fed-up, and lead to him or her judging a book 'dated'. And it is certainly true that not understanding the referential material of Cold Comfort Farm may cause a reader to miss some subtle nuances of meaning. Having said that, it does not hamper one's enjoyment of the novel, although researching some of the referential material certainly engenders an admiration for the breadth and depth of Stella Gibbons' cultural knowledge and experience. Thirty years on, then, from that first experience of designating Cold Comfort Farm 'My Favourite Book', I now think of it as a highly original, imaginative, and thought-provoking novel. I also still consider it one of the funniest novels I have ever read... and I think that is a verdict that would have pleased its author enormously! Some reviews of the period: Punch - "Miss Stella Gibbons...

has arisen to mock with devilish skill at a certain kind of much read, earthy passionate novel" Times Literary Supplement - "It is quite time that the earthy and passionate novel was parodied" from: Out of the Woodshed: The Life of Stella Gibbons by Reggie Oliver (Bloomsbury, 1998) A more recent review: The Independent - "Delicious ... Cold Comfort Farm has the sunniness of a P.G. Wodehouse and the comic aplomb of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop." And from the internet: Shipley Book Group - "The dialect is wonderful and the descriptive passages show a brilliant grasp of the work she is parodying." herumi on dooyoo - "...

the humour in it is very subtle, and unlike anything I've come across before." Wisewoman on Library Thing - "I found it not nearly as funny or as Austenian as I had been led to believe." The Tortoise on Library Thing - "The characters lacked depth and are mostly forgettable." Cold Comfort Farm - The Books - The Book Club - ABC TV Cold Comfort Farm Watch video Overview Finding herself orphaned at 19, London socialite Flora Post considers the thought of getting a job to compliment her meagre inheritance unpalatable. She decides instead to impose upon various members of her extended family to see if any will take her in. Much to the chagrin of her friend Mrs Smiling she takes up an oddly written offer from her Cousin Judith Starkadder to come and stay at Cold Comfort Farm. Intrigued by Judith's letter which speaks of 'her rights' and the promise that she will 'atone' for the wrong done to Flora's father on the condition that Flora must never ask her why, Flora, armed with a copy of the Higher Common Self, makes her way to Howling, Sussex.

Flora's worst fears about life in the country with a family of hicks are realised when she meets the Starkadders. Populated by a motley crew which includes depressed and manic Judith, her God fearing husband Amos, his suspicious and jealous brother Reuben, their over-sexed son Seth and their daughter the young, lovesick but very poorly dressed Elfine. But ever the optimist Flora is not one to be easy swayed. She determines to reorganise the dour Cold Comfort Farm in a way that benefits each of its inhabitants, along the way hoping to lift the curse that befell the place many years earlier, when reclusive family matriarch Aunt Ada Doom saw something nasty in the woodshed. Author Profile The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living. Her father had always been spoken of as a wealthy man, but on his death his executors were disconcerted to find him a poor one.

After death duties had been paid and the demands of creditors satisfied, his child was left with an income of one hundred pounds a year, and no property. Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. The one had not been impaired by always having her own way nor the other by the violent athletic sports in which she had been compelled to take part, but she realized that neither was adequate as an equipment for earning her keep. She decided, therefore, to stay with a friend, a Mrs Smiling, at her house in Lambeth until she could decide where to bestow herself and her hundred pounds a year. The death of her parents did not cause Flora much grief, for she had barely known them. They were addicted to travel, and spent only a month or so of each year in England. Flora, from her tenth year, had passed her school holidays at the house of Mrs Smiling's mother; and when Mrs Smiling married, Flora spent them at her friend's house instead. It was therefore with the feelings of one who returns home that she entered the precincts of Lambeth upon a gloomy afternoon in February, a fortnight after her father's funeral.

Mrs Smiling was fortunate in that she had inherited house property in Lambeth before the rents in that district soared to ludicrous heights, following the tide of fashion as it swung away from Mayfair to the other side of the river, and the stone parapets bordering the Thames became, as a consequence, the sauntering ground of Argentinian women and their bull ï¿½terriers. Her husband (she was a widow) had owned three houses in Lambeth which he had bequeathed to her. One, in Mouse Place, was the pleasantest of the three, and faced with its shell fanlight the changing Thames; here Mrs Smiling lived, while of the other two, one had been pulled down and a garage perpetrated upon its site, and the third, which was too small and inconvenient for any other purpose, had been made into the Old Diplomacy Club. The white porcelain geraniums which hung in baskets from the little iron balconies of 1, Mouse Place, did much to cheer Flora's spirits as her taxi stopped before its door.

Turning from the taxi to the house, she saw that the door had already been opened by Mrs Smiling's butler, Sneller, who was looking down upon her with dim approval. He was, she reflected, almost rudely like a tortoise; and she was glad her friend kept none as pets or they might have suspected mockery. Mrs Smiling was awaiting her in the drawing-room overï¿½looking the river. She was a small Irishwoman of twenty-ï¿½six years, with a fair complexion, large grey eyes and a little crooked nose. She had two interests in life. One was the imposing of reason and moderation into the bosoms of some fifteen gentlemen of birth and fortune who were madly in love with her, and who had flown to such remote places as the Jhonsong La, Lake M'Luba-M'Luba and the Kwanhattons because of her refusal to marry them. She wrote to them all once a week, and they (as her friends knew to their cost, for she was for ever reading aloud long, boring bits from their letters) wrote to her.

top ↑ JENNIFER BYRNE: We've been kicking around the idea of doing a funny book - one that's funny ha-ha, of course - for ages now, but they're not easy to find - good ones, anyway. Then Jason had the brainwave of bringing Stella Gibbons' delightful parody... JASON STEGER: I like having brainwaves. JENNIFER BYRNE: ..of the rural English novel Cold Comfort Farm. NARRATOR: When London socialite Flora Poste is orphaned at 19, she's horrified at the thought of finding her own keep. She decides instead to impose on her unruly cousins - the Starkadders from Cold Comfort Farm. It's not long before Flora, armed with her handbook, The Higher Common Sense, begins her good-natured meddling into their shambolic affairs, eventually confronting the source of all their woes - cranky old aunt Ada Doom, driven mad by something nasty she saw in the woodshed. JENNIFER BYRNE: OK, Jason, I've already told you I made an absolute spectacle of myself laughing in the bus the other day over this. JASON STEGER: I'm delighted to hear that.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Tell us. JASON STEGER: The thing I like about Cold Comfort Farm is that it is, as you said, funny. I think it's very rare for a book to make you laugh, make you laugh out loud, make you chuckle inwardly. But this does in a number of ways. It does through the actual writing of the book. Again, we were talking about tone earlier on. The narrative voice is brilliantly sort of tart and witty and the characters that Stella Gibbons has created down on Cold Comfort Farm are wonderful. There's these funny, rural people who are completely absurd but entirely believable, presided over Ada Doom, who is the grandmother who has seen something nasty in the woodshed. JENNIFER BYRNE: We never find out what. JASON STEGER: No, no, you don't. But there are very few writers... Alright, Shakespeare - 'To be or not to be', in Casablanca - 'Play it again, Sam'. Stella Gibbons - 'I saw something nasty in the woodshed.' This is on a par. JENNIFER BYRNE: It's a first time it was ever used.

JASON STEGER: Anybody who's read it will recognise that - anybody. The thing is, as you say, it was a parody. It was a parody of these curious English novels - Mary Mann, to some extent Thomas Hardy, to some extent Lawrence, a parody of these books, but its actually transcends its own motive by becoming a terrific novel in its own right. JENNIFER BYRNE: Marieke, what did you think? MARIEKE HARDY: I loved it. JASON STEGER: Glad to hear that. MARIEKE HARDY: I could eat it. I don't know how much more to love it without actually physically ingesting it. But it is so funny and so sharply written and the jokes, comically, feel very modern. It's like Dorothy Parker being entertainment editor for New Weekly or something because the story itself enters a lot of melodrama. It's ludicrous in parts. JENNIFER BYRNE: You said the characters are believable. I didn't think... MARIEKE HARDY: The whole thing is ridiculous but it's so delightful. JASON STEGER: But you just go along with it. If you take them in isolation.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Urk who speaks to water voles? JASON STEGER: I was talking to some water voles only the other day, as one does. VIRGINIA GAY: They speak very highly of you too. JASON STEGER: We were having a lovely conversation. MARIEKE HARDY: I'm so glad you did your accent. I was hoping you would. In less capable hands, it would be merely that... It would be merely fluff and ridiculous. But she's just deft and her comic timing is unbelievable. And you don't often laugh out loud at a book. JENNIFER BYRNE: I was in the bus. JASON STEGER: It's very difficult. JENNIFER BYRNE: People were staring. People were staring at me. MARIEKE HARDY: My dog gave me some very peculiar looks. JENNIFER BYRNE: Michael. MICHAEL ROWBOTHAM: I think it's absolutely charming as a book. It reminded me, it's interesting, of Evelyn Waugh, and some of his great comedies. I think some of the set pieces are absolutely hilarious, and some of the observations.

Although at other times... If you don't know the novels that she's parodying, maybe you don't quite grasp how clever she is. But I sought of imagine Richard Curtis when he did Vicar Of Dibley. Almost every character could have come straight out of Vicar Of Dibley. It was like a 1930s version of The Vicar Of Dibley with Flora Poste arriving in this little town and sorting everyone out. And she slightly irritated me - Flora. JENNIFER BYRNE: Really? MICHAEL ROWBOTHAM: Yeah. MARIEKE HARDY: She's like Julie Andrews at times. MICHAEL ROWBOTHAM: Yeah, a bit too perfect. You're waiting for her to slip up. You feel like Emma Woodhouse in Emma. You knew she was gonna fall on her face at some point, whereas Flora, it's just everything works out beautifully. MARIEKE HARDY: She's Mary Poppins. She ran her finger over things and then just flew off in her umbrella.

JENNIFER BYRNE: But any book where the creator's first word to you, virtually, is 'My parents had died, I didn't really care much, there was no money, it was impossible that I'd be sent down to work so I just had to sponge on my relatives.' I mean, you like that woman! VIRGINIA GAY: I agree. I think it's delightful. I think it's so charming. And so funny. And deft. 'Deft' is definitely the word for her level of satire and for her observance. But I was really interested, too, Michael. I'm glad you brought this up, 'cause I thought the parallel with Emma is so strong and yet I was also reading the introduction that said this has never been a classic book. It's a book that everybody knows and loves, but it's never been studied per se, it's never on reading lists, by and large. JENNIFER BYRNE: It's true. Why isn't it a classic? It deserves to be.

VIRGINIA GAY: Listen, I think what it is is that partly you're hoping, you're hoping to be a bit smarter than Flora, and Flora is always smarter than you, which doesn't allow the reader to get in in quite the same way that you get in with Emma, where the whole time you're going, 'It's Mr Knightley, you fool. Mr Knightley, Mr Knightley.' But with this, transparently, Flora is in control. I also think she doesn't really come up against any obstacles. Every time she meets someone, she gauges them and she fixes them. That robs you of a greater sort of Anna Karenina kind of structure. MARIEKE HARDY: That would be a very different book. VIRGINIA GAY: It would be. MARIEKE HARDY: 'Well, that didn't work out. Whoa!' VIRGINIA GAY: 'Whay!' JASON STEGER: If Stella Gibbons doesn't... I mean, you don't actually... When there's that final encounter between Flora and Ada Doom, you don't actually know what goes on. VIRGINIA GAY: No, you don't.

JASON STEGER: She bottles that one. MARIEKE HARDY: Until she strides downstairs in her leathers, her black leathers. JENNIFER BYRNE: With Ada. MARIEKE HARDY: In which case, she does bottle it. And that's one of the reasons, when you say you don't buy it, when you think that Aunt Ada was the barnacle that would not be moved, she was the reason that no-one left that family. MARIEKE HARDY: She'd hold it off-screen. VIRGINIA GAY: Off-screen, absolutely. MICHAEL ROWBOTHAM: And she solved it off-screen. And you feel a little cheated, 'cause you think, 'Well, how did she get Aunt Ada out of the attic?' JENNIFER BYRNE: Tragically, for bright, charming Stella Gibbons, she wrote 24 novels more and none of them... MARIEKE HARDY: She wrote this! The Joseph Heller series. JENNIFER BYRNE: Her first novel.

MICHAEL ROWBOTHAM: That reference in here to the Mybug character who's writing a book about the fact that Wuthering Heights wasn't written by Bronte. MARIEKE HARDY: By those drunks. JASON STEGER: They were all drunk. MICHAEL ROWBOTHAM: It was by the brother, 'cause it had to be man that'd written it. She faced the problem, Stella, that a lot of people thought Evelyn Waugh must have written Cold Comfort Farm. JENNIFER BYRNE: The Women's Weekly, such a supportive institution in 1933 of Australian women, describe it 'a book from one of those rare beings, a humorous woman writer.' VIRGINIA GAY: Yeah, you and me. MARIEKE HARDY: Someone call Christopher Hitchens at once! JENNIFER BYRNE: Did you grow up with it? VIRGINIA GAY: I did. My family's a great family of quoters. And so I knew the quotes, 'something nasty in the woodshed' and 'little mop'.

We never did the dishes without somebody going, 'Have you got your little mop?' 'Have you got your little mop?' JASON STEGER: You were clattering the dishes. VIRGINIA GAY: I was clattering the dishes with my twig. JENNIFER BYRNE: Some of you have read it, I can tell. VIRGINIA GAY: So I knew of it, I knew its constructs and I knew its great phrases before I knew the book. And I think I read it again when I was 12, 14. And it's great to read it again now and get a little more of the elegance of the pastiche and to just be a little bit more aware of what she's doing. I think it's a classic family book. I think every family SHOULD read it and quote from it. JENNIFER BYRNE: Oh, that's death, isn't it, when you say everything 'should' be in your family. MARIEKE HARDY: A story no parent should miss. But I understand that maybe it's the failure to become a classic, it is... it's a disservice to call it 'light'.

But there is so much lightness in it, but it's so carefully baked, I suppose. It's so carefully crafted. But I think that on the surface all people see is, 'Ooh, I'm Julie Andrews coming in and fixing everything, Goodbye, everybody, in my plane.' I'm gonna play her in the movie, obviously. JENNIFER BYRNE: Brilliant. MARIEKE HARDY: But it does seem, on the surface, very light, but it's just so sharp. JENNIFER BYRNE: Did you find a favourite bit? MARIEKE HARDY: Oh, yes. JENNIFER BYRNE: Come on. Give us one bit. MARIEKE HARDY: Oh, no, it was just a bit about DH Lawrence. So I thought I was pretty tired of talking about DH Lawrence on this show. JASON STEGER: Where's Howard Jacobson when you need him? MARIEKE HARDY: I know. I always need him. There you go. 'Mr Mybug, however, did ask Rennet to marry him.

He said that, by God, DH Lawrence was right when he had said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and woman. And how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage?' JENNIFER BYRNE: So as you will have gathered, we found that 'funny ha-ha' book and we really enjoyed it. And thank you to you, Jason Steger. JASON STEGER: Pleasure. Oh, look at that - round of applause. Whoo! JENNIFER BYRNE: Can't recommend it too highly. MARIEKE HARDY: No. Don't get used to it. JENNIFER BYRNE: That is our club for another month. A big thankyou again to tonight's Book Clubbers. To Michael, to Marieke, to Jason - especially to Jason - and to Virginia. Please, thank them all. Now, next month, we are looking, again, at a new Australian novel. We looked at one about three months ago. This one is Favel Parrett's Past the Shallows.

And in the spirit of Venus, Marieke is bringing the next classic which is Bulgakov's big, fat book about power and corruption, about good and evil, about the devil and the bureaucrat. It's The Master and Margarita. You've seen it on a million must-read lists. It's coming next month. Until then, very happy reading to you and thanks for you company. Goodnight. Incredibly witty and clever-loved every minute of reading this book-and definitely a book which enjoyably instructs one on how to live a brisk efficient busy body sort of life Katerina Protopsaltis 13 Dec 2012 1:59:34pm I am reading 'Cold Comfort Farm' for the second time and love it, but have struck a snag. I am reading the Penguin version published in 2009. In chapter 12, the third paragraph down starts 'Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Floras fair, pensive face........She could not look at him, because public phones were not fitted with television dials.' Were there videophones in the early 30s? It does not ring true.

I am confused' Does anyone own an early copy of this book and could they check it to see if this was written in the first publication by Longmans. Stella Gibbons 11 Jan 2012 6:16:51pm I loved this book so much - thank you for putting me onto it. When I bought it, I was standing in the line to pay in the bookshop, and the lady behind me pointed to the book and asked why I was buying it. I said it was because I had been watching back episodes of the First Tuesday Book Club. She then showed me that she was buying another Penguin Classic - Madam Bovary - because she had also been watching back episodes!! Anyway, the book was brilliant, I absolutely loved the language and the imagery . Thank you, again.

Jacqui 05 Sep 2011 10:01:13pm I just adore this book, she should be as well known as Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, thanks for introducing me to Cold Comfort Farm murjan 18 Jul 2011 2:31:07pm I first read this when I was twelve and have read it nearly EVERY year since!! The story is the classic Cinderella theme - on a large scale. No-one is safe from Flora Post's magic fairy godmother's wand. It takes you into the Australian's idea of the muddy and moody English country side and does not disappoint for a second. Stella Gibbons has structured the perfect how-to-write-a-novel novel - characters,sense of place,plot and the perfect voice. It has happy endings by the bagload. It is like reading a DVD - everything comes alive before your very eyes. Contains no coarse language and maybe the sex scenes are hidden in the woodshed! FINNOLA top ↑ Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1905.

She grew up in North London (where she lived for all her life) with her father, Telford a medical doctor, her mother Maude and two younger brothers Gerald and Lewis. Gibbons began studying Journalism in 1921 and began work with British United Press in 1924 as a cable decoded. In 1926 her parents died within a few months of one another and Gibbons became the main provider of herself and brothers. In 1928 she had moved to the Evening Standard and later Lady. In 1930 The Mountain Beast, a book of her poetry was published. In 1932, Cold Comfort Farm was published and was an immediate success, in fact Gibbons never quite achieved the same level of success although she went on to write another twenty-four novels, three collections of short stories and two more volumes of poetry. She married the actor and singer Allan Webb in 1933 and they had a daughter Laura. Gibbons died in London in 1989.

The 100 best novels: No 57 – Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) | Books | The Guardian The 100 best novels The 100 best novels: No 57 – Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) The book for which Gibbons is best remembered was a satire of late-Victorian pastoral fiction but went on to influence many subsequent generations Rufus Sewell and Kate Beckinsale in the 1995 film adaptation of Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm, directed by John Schlesinger. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/BBC Share on Messenger Close Stella Gibbons, who was born in the same year as Georgette Heyer and Stevie Smith , 1902, wrote more than 20 novels, and thought of herself as a poet.

But she continues to be remembered, and in some quarters revered, for just one title, a jeu d’esprit that’s a brilliant parody of an inter-war genre of provincial, rural melodrama typified (at the high end) by DH Lawrence and, much lower down, by Mary Webb , author of titles such as Precious Bane and The Golden Arrow . Part of its immediate success was probably also due to the merciless contempt in which the young Gibbons (she was barely 30) held many generations of romantic/pastoral fiction. Or, indeed, the brisk way (with one, two or three asterisks) in which she humorously drew attention to the best bits in her narrative. Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm while working for on the books pages of the Lady . Inspired, or perhaps provoked, by the fashion for novels set in remote rustic villages about sensitive young men with names like “Micah”, she set about demolishing a piece of treasured literary real estate whose origins can be traced to the late-Victorian novels of Thomas Hardy ( No 29 in this series ).

From its opening line – “The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged” – to Aunt Ada’s celebrated recollection of “something nasty in the woodshed”, Cold Comfort Farm has the air of a novel written, as it were, in one joyous exhalation, according to Gibbons, somewhere between Lyons Corner House and Boulogne-sur-Mer during the year spanning 1931/32. The plot is simple. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19 when her parents are both carried off by the 1919 Spanish flu epidemic, is penniless. Her only option is to throw herself on the charity of her remote Sussex relatives, the Starkadders – Judith, her preacher husband Amos, their sons Seth and Reuben, several other cousins (Harkaway, Urk, Ezra, and Caraway) including the dominant matriarchal figure of aunt Ada Doom – all living, or partly living, in Cold Comfort Farm, Howling, Sussex.

The Starkadders’ farm is an ominous place with a priapic bull, Big Business, and a hopeless herd of Jersey cows – Graceless, Pointless, Aimless, and Feckless – attended by several taciturn, brooding rustic inhabitants. Among some memorable comic set-pieces, cousin Amos preaching hellfire and damnation to the congregation of the Church of the Quivering Brethren is a high point. As the rustic mayhem unfolds, Miss Poste, who is definitely a modern, metropolitan bossyboots, decides that it’s her mission to bring a metropolitan “higher common sense” to this benighted spot, and sets about trying to redeem the lives of her relatives. Aunt Ada will go flying to Paris. The memories of the woodshed will become domesticated, Miss Poste herself will eventually marry her country cousin, Charles Fairford, and everyone live happily ever after. Sort of. (It’s a comedy, remember?) A note on the text Stella Gibbons humorously disparaged her first novel as the work of a journalist trespassing on a higher calling from “the meaningless and vulgar bustle of newspaper offices”.

Cold Comfort Farm was first published by Longmans in 1932, and was, according to the critic Lynne Truss , labelled “middlebrow”, to Gibbons’s disadvantage among the critics. But the book sold very well: 28,000 copies in hardback and 315,000 in paperback in its first 15 years. It won the 1933 prix étranger of the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse , and joined an informal canon of accidental English comic masterpieces. Unlike, for instance, Three Men in a Boat ( No 25 in this series ), another one-off classic, it found fans mainly in the British Isles. Its afterlife has influenced many writers and it is not fanciful, I think, to see in the film Withnail & I the novel’s lingering influence on later generations. Gibbons herself, in a Punch essay, “Genesis of a Novel”, compared her book to “some unignorable old uncle, to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but who is often an embarrassment and a bore”.

Looking back, she was, she said, “filled by an incredulous wonder that I could once have been so light-hearted”. Gibbons twice returned to the scene of her triumph, with Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (1940), and again in 1949 with Conference at Cold Comfort Farm . Both flopped, and remain largely unread. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1950. She died in 1989 and there’s also a biography, Out of the Woodshed: The Life of Stella Gibbons by Reggie Oliver (1998). I’ve listed three prominent titles from among her many other books , all still in print.

Question: Who wrote the novel Cold Comfort Farm?
Answer: STELLA GIBBONS